If there's a single message passed down from each generation of American parents to their children, it is a two-word line: Better Yourself. And if there's a temple of self-betterment in each town, it is the local school. We have worshipped there for some time.

[E]very time you think the entertainment moguls have hit rock bottom, they reach for the jackhammer and rat-a-tat-tat a little deeper.

What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.

My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word "jerk."

Once upon a time we were just plain people. But that was before we began having relationships with mechanical systems. Get involved with a machine and sooner or later you are reduced to a factor.

How many of the people I know - sons and daughters - have intricate abstract expressionist paintings of their mothers, created out of their own emotions, attitudes, hands. And how many have only Polaroid pictures of their fathers.

We owned what we learned back there; the experience and the growth are grafted into our lives.